English

MA Comprehensive Exam Policy (revised Spring, 2021)

Policy for the New Comprehensive Exam (2021)

The Comprehensive Exam was revised beginning in the Spring of 2021. The new format exam consists of 2 field essays, based on a bibliography created in consultation with a supervising professor. The comprehensive exam is meant to be completed in a single semester. The details of the new process are detailed below:

• Each essay shall be overseen by a graduate faculty member who teaches in the MA program, and completed over the course of a semester. Students may only extend the deadline beyond that semester under the following extenuating circumstances: serious illness, family or medical leave, or a professor’s illness or leave. These circumstances must be documented.
• Each essay shall cover 4 primary texts and 6 secondary texts (including chapters/articles) and should endeavor to define a field, including the key thinkers, questions, debates, methodologies, etc. within the field. Each essay should be 15-20 pages long and should adhere to the style defined by the most recent edition of the MLA Handbook.
• The student shall provide each faculty member with a paragraph outlining their understanding of the field, as well as their bibliography for the exam. The faculty member shall then either approve the bibliography or ask the student to revise the bibliography before beginning the exam.
• The faculty member and student shall formulate the specific question for the exam together.
• Students may choose only one of the two topics based on a subject they have previously studied and written about for a graduate seminar.
• Both questions may cover literature from the same country, genre, or time period, but they cannot overlap in more than one area.
• The bibliographies for each question must be entirely unique.
• The first draft of both exam questions shall be due to faculty members by the Friday of the fifth week of the semester, a second draft by the Friday of the tenth week of the semester, and the final version by the Monday of the thirteenth week of the semester.*
• The exam is graded on a pass/fail system, though a faculty member could note that an essay passes with distinction. In the case that the essay does not pass even after two cycles of revision, there are two options:
  • The faculty member agrees to continue working with the student and requests more specific revisions.
  • The faculty member declines to continue working with the student, in which case the student would to find another faculty member, and formulate a new question.  
• Upon successful completion of both essays, the student meets with the Graduate Committee on the final day of CEP week to have a discussion of the work, including things like potential areas for development, potential for publication, etc.

*Faculty may, at their discretion, request additional drafts of students. These are the minimal draft and revision timelines set by the program.

Timelines:

• Students should begin meeting with faculty members to discuss their proposed essays, and begin developing their bibliographies, during the semester before they intend to write the exams. This gives them time to secure appropriate faculty, have important conversations about their fields and areas of interests, and begin compiling their research.
• Students must complete a candidacy form, which asks them to articulate their fields of interests, includes signatures from the faculty with whom the students are working, and serves as an acknowledgment by the student that they understand the timeline, requirements, and processes. All documentation required for the essays—the approved bibliographies and fields of study—must be attached to the candidacy forms. The candidacy forms and documentation should be in place no later than the final week of the semester before the student begins writing. Students who do not submit their candidacy forms by the end of the month of the previous term (May for fall exams, December for spring exams) will not be allowed to write the exam the following term.
• Students should complete the reading for the comp exam during the break before they begin writing (Summer for Fall exams, Winter for Spring exams). Students should plan to begin writing as soon as the semester begins (late August for Fall exams, late January for Spring exams)  in order to meet their deadlines 
• The deadlines indicated above are hard deadlines set by the program. Students not meeting these deadlines will not move forward with the exam.
• The comprehensive exam essays should be completed over the course of one semester. There may be some circumstances for some students which could allow for an extension of this timeline, but this would be determined on a case-by-case basis according to the extenuating circumstances defined above.
• The exam cannot be taken until the student has completed 24 credit hours.
• Since the program includes 18 required credits and 12 electives, we recommend that students follow one of the timelines detailed below, according to how many courses they take each term.

Timeline for 3/3/2/2

Spring of second year

Timeline for 3/2/3/2

Spring of second year

Timeline for 2/2/2/2/2

Summer after second year or fall of third year